Pandemic with a novel pathogen

E HealthResilience and crisis preparednessDemographics and human capitalEconomic security and supply chains

A novel respiratory pathogen with severity between COVID-19 and the 1918 influenza spreads globally; borders close for six months; health systems exceed surge capacity; vaccines take a year. Pandemic ranks first in both the Swiss and Norwegian national risk analyses and is the UK's most likely catastrophic risk. Lloyd's puts the five-year global loss at US$13.6 trillion weighted and up to 6.4 per cent of global GDP in the extreme case. Earlier UK National Risk Register editions assumed an attack rate up to 50 per cent and a case fatality rate up to 2.5 per cent for pandemic influenza.

Rating history

One row per edition. Each edition page is frozen at release; corrections are published as errata.

Edition	Rank	L2y	L10y	Systemic	National	Confidence	Edition view
2027	8	3Possible	4Likely	5Catastrophic	5Catastrophic	medium	Open

Versions

Version	Date	Change
0.2.0	2 October 2026	Entered the Library at v0.2 with GINC desk scores.

Citation and downloads

Version: 0.2.0 · active
Change log: 0.2.0 · 2 October 2026 · Entered the Library at v0.2 with GINC desk scores.
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Cite as

GINC (2027). Scenario S14 Pandemic with a novel pathogen, Scenario Library v0.2. scenarios.ginc.org/library/pandemic-novel-pathogen

Content and data are published under CC BY 4.0.

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